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this new year

well, we've made it to another year. and our little family has made it back home. though we had to leave home to come home, and every time i do it feels a little less, and a little more like i'm leaving a bit of myself behind.

i don't go home to my childhood house-home, but i go home to the city that will always be home.

and i come home to the place where my children call home, but still doesn't feel fully like home. i'm not sure it ever completely will.

this time around was especially nostalgic because the parkway was closed, and we had to go a bunch of back ways to get where we were going. i kept pointing out roads and places to peter - this is where my club team used to practice. this is where our coach always took us out for pizza. this is the neighborhood where a bunch of my friends lived.

it was odd to drive by places i had forgotten about. it was odd to think back and realize i hadn't driven those roads for at least 10 years.

we have another christmas behind us, but i still have my christmas music on this morning. we rang in another new year, but i don't feel like my goals have changed much. yes, the push to accomplish them is stronger as everyone else makes the two week push to make life-altering changes that will soon fall by the way-side.

don't get me wrong - the new year is a great time to make changes. it's an obvious demarcation of something new, and fresh, and open to possibilities. i fully understand why resolutions are around, and i make them, but i try not to make them in the same way.

i've learned that if i wait until the new year to make changes i'll never change much of anything in my life.

i try to re-evaluate regularly, though i don't always do the best job of it. luckily for me we take a decent amount of trips over the course of the year. and since i cannot read in the car i end up reflecting on life and talking with peter about what i'd like to change.

then i get home, and i go a little crazy because there is always so much to do. last night after we got back i was in hyper-drive. peter had to remind me that i needed to get ready for bed.

it's just that i look around and i see all the stuff from our trip, and all of our stuff from christmas that has yet to find a home. i see all of the christmas decorations, and all of the things i want to sort through, and sort out. i see our kitchen still needing some work to get to where we want it.
and i go a little crazy.

this time of year i'm trying to sort through and figure out what my priorities really are. i'm trying to make time for them first, and not just let life happen to me. i can waste time with the best of them so this is not an easy prospect.

so often i feel the tension of wanting a bit of a break {and sometimes that really is the best option for my mental health}, and wanting to make a bigger difference in the world.

some of it is a stage of life thing. some of it simply has to do with the reality of my days. but some of it is a deeper discontent. it's not a matter of having more. it's a matter of affecting more.

sometimes i'm paralyzed with indecision because there are many different areas to which i could direct my efforts. i want to choose the best way. but sitting on the sidelines is definitely not the best way, and at some point i have to release the old perfectionist tendencies, and just pick a lane.

i need to get past my fear of failure. perfectionism doesn't lend itself to failures, but life is full of them.

there are plenty of things i've been working toward over the last few months that extend into this new year, but these things are the over-arching drivers of the rest of the concrete things:

realize that failure is part of life, and stop letting it deter me. learn from it, move on.

simplify, simplify, simplify. {as peter said yesterday -} there is no one thing that i have that i couldn't live without for a while. i'm not in need of anything. remove things, don't add them.

live a balanced life driven by God, and doing the best things. set my own priorities, and stick to them. don't let other people make my priorities for me, because they will if i let them.